The Hon’ble Supreme Court in a landmark judgment in Pankaj Bansal v. Union of India, 2023 SCC OnLine SC 1244, held that a person arrested under section 19 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 must be informed of the grounds of arrest in writing and that merely reading out the grounds of arrest is not sufficient to meet the requirements of protection under articles 21 and 22 of the Constitution. The Hon’ble Court provided two reasons for this conclusion: First, if the grounds are only read out to the arrested person without a written copy being provided, and there is a later dispute, it becomes a matter of the arrested person’s word against that of the officer. Second, the constitutional purpose of giving such information is not only to inform the arrested person of the reasons for the arrest but also to allow the person to consult an advocate and, if they choose, to apply for bail under section 45 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
While Pankaj Bansal enhanced procedural safeguards, it also brought into focus a crucial question of law – does the requirement to provide written grounds apply only to future arrests, or does it also apply to arrests made before the said judgment. This issue was taken up soon after in Ram Kishor Arora v. Directorate of Enforcement, (2024) 7 SCC 599, where another bench of the Hon’ble Supreme Court held that the Pankaj Bansal decision applies only going forward. The Hon’ble Court said that the use of the word “henceforth” in the judgment made it clear that the requirement was prospective. It also noted that applying this rule to past arrests could lead to many previous arrests being challenged and overturned, which would not serve the public interest.
Despite this, several Hon’ble High Courts have taken divergent views. In Roop Bansal v. Union of India, 2023 SCC OnLine P&H 3597, the Punjab and Haryana High Court held that the Pankaj Bansal judgment applies even to arrests made before October 2023. The Court reasoned that if the intention of the Hon’ble Supreme Court had been to apply the rule only prospectively, the arrest of Pankaj Bansal and Basant Bansal would not have been declared illegal. However, in a later case, Ravinder v. State of Haryana, MANU/PH/0331/2025, a coordinate bench of the same High Court held that the Pankaj Bansal judgment does not apply to an arrest made under the Indian Penal Code/Arms Act before October 2023. This shows that the law on this point remains unsettled.
In June 2025, the State of Karnataka approached the Hon’ble Supreme Court to challenge an order quashing an arrest made in March 2023 under the Indian Penal Code, 1860, by applying Pankaj Bansal. The State argued that the judgment was not meant to apply to past arrests and relied on the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s own reasoning in Ram Kishor Arora. However, the bench hearing the matter questioned the logic of such a claim by pointing out that the arrest of the Bansals themselves – prior to the date of judgment – was declared illegal in Pankaj Bansal. The Bench orally observed that the use of the word “henceforth” in Pankaj Bansal could not be taken as a blanket declaration of prospective application. Instead, it was more in the nature of a warning or guidance to enforcement authorities, indicating that moving forward, the Hon’ble Courts would be inclined to examine compliance with the constitutional and statutory obligation to communicate the grounds of arrest, including in writing.
Until the Hon’ble Supreme Court gives a final decision on this issue, the legal position remains dicey. Some courts treat Pankaj Bansal as a constitutional safeguard that applies to all arrests regardless of when they took place. Others view it as a new rule that applies only to arrests made after the date of the judgment. The question goes to the heart of procedural fairness in arrest and detention and raises serious concerns about consistency in enforcement and the legal consequences of non-compliance. A conclusive ruling from the Hon’ble Supreme Court is not only necessary to resolve the present conflict but also to settle the limits of procedural protection under both special and general criminal law.
